Popular Articles

The Taxation Of Cloud Computing And Digital Content, David Shakow

Faculty Scholarship

“Cloud computing” raises important and difficult questions in state tax law, and for Federal taxes, particularly in the foreign tax area. As cloud computing solutions are adopted by businesses, items we view as tangible are transformed into digital products. In this article, I will describe the problems cloud computing poses for tax systems. I will show how current law is applied to cloud computing and will identify the difficulties current approaches face as they are applied to this developing technology.

My primary interest is how Federal tax law applies to cloud computing, particularly as the new technology affects international transactions ...

Mediation

In 2011 the Inspector-General of Taxation announced the terms of reference of a review into the ATO’s utilisation of early and alternative dispute resolution. Against this background, this article considers mediation as an alternative method in resolving tax disputes. Specifically, this article looks at how mediation is utilised in the tax disputes resolution procedures in the United States and in Australia - by the Administrative Appeals Tribunal and Federal Court of Australia. It provides recommendations on what the ATO and Australian policymakers can learn from these experiences in order to enhance the use of tax mediation in the disputes resolution ...

Faculty Scholarship

The Neglected Value Of The Legislative Privilege In State Legislatures, Steven F. Huefner

William & Mary Law Review

Forty-three state constitutions contain a provision, analogous to the U.S. Constitution's Speech or Debate Clause (Article I, Section 6, Clause 1), granting state legislators a legal privilege in connection with their legislative work. While some of these states' provisions have never been applied, recent judicial interpretations in other states have departed from settled federal interpretations of the legislative privilege, failing to apply it broadly to protect the legislative process and instead unduly favoring ideals of open government. This Article defends the value of a broad constitutional privilege for state legislators to protect the integrity of the deliberative process ...

State And Local Income And Franchise Tax Aspects Of Corporate Acquisitions, Peter L. Faber

William & Mary Annual Tax Conference

State Taxation Of Unitary Businesses , Peter G. Chen

Fordham Urban Law Journal

The income taxation of multistate businesses has created problems for tax administrators, primarily with regard to the question of how to divide the income taxation amongst the multiple states. To address this, the concepts of unitary business and formula apportionment have been created. However, the non-uniform state taxation practices create difficulties even with the existence of these concepts. Some states have adopted the Multistate Tax Compact, but for it to be completely effective there still must be a uniform view adopted on what constitutes a unitary business. This note examines the constitutional issues attendant to developing a standard definition of ...

All Articles in Taxation-State and Local

Definitions, Religion, And Free Exercise Guarantees, Mark Strasser

Mark Strasser

The First Amendment to the United States Constitution protects the free exercise of religion. Non-religious practices do not receive those same protections, which makes the ability to distinguish between religious and non-religious practices important. Regrettably, members of the Court have been unable to agree about how to distinguish the religious from the non-religious—sometimes, the implicit criteria focus on the sincerity of the beliefs, sometimes the strength of the beliefs or the role that they play in an individual’s life, and sometimes the kind of beliefs. In short, the Court has virtually guaranteed an incoherent jurisprudence by sending contradictory ...

A Taxing Endeavor: Local Government Protection Of Our Nation's Coasts In The "Wake" Of Climate Change, Simone Savino

Simone Savino

A storm is brewing, and not just in our nation’s coastal waters. The effects of climate change are becoming alarmingly apparent: sea levels are rising, storm surges are intensifying and ocean temperatures are warming at increasing speeds. Higher storm surges have led to increased flooding in coastal zones and nearby low-lying regions. The need for greater disaster preparedness in areas vulnerable to storm surges is evident, not just in the United States, but worldwide. As a direct result, coastal towns and cities have been left with the daunting task, and cost, of implementing littoral adaptation measures such as beach ...

Shut Up: Pay More: This What You Voted For. Why You Don't See Me At San Francisco's Hall Of Justice, David D. Butler

David D. Butler

Urban violence, much of it politically motivated, has driven the taxpaying Middle Class into the suburbs. This has left only the tax eating poor and the tax avoiding rich in the big cities. This has resulted in urban bankruptcy in Detroit and even in California with its gifts of the technological Gold Rush, the Pacific Ocean, and the Sierra Nevada and Santa Lucia Mountains. The poor are more issolated than ever confined to the functional equivalent of no go zones. They speak a differenct language, dress differently, and sell drugs until they are caught and caged, providing good pay and ...

Wynne: It's Not About Double Taxation, Michael S. Knoll, Ruth Mason

Faculty Scholarship

This Article discusses Wynne v. Comptroller, a dormant Commerce Clause case against Maryland pending before the Supreme Court. We use economic analysis to rebut Maryland’s claim that its tax regime does not discriminate against interstate commerce. We also argue that the parties’ framing of the central issue in the case as whether the Constitution requires states to relieve double taxation draws focus away from the discrimination question, and therefore could undermine the Wynnes’ case and lead to unjustified narrowing of the dormant Commerce Clause. We also show how our approach to tax discrimination resolves many of the issues that ...

LissaCoffey

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Tax Debt Help – Settlement & Negotiation, Lissa Coffey

LissaCoffey

Get helpful tips, advice and help with debt or any kind of irs help on setting up payment plans, requesting affordable installment agreements, reducing your tax debts through an Offer in Compromise, or discharging your tax debts through bankruptcy. Tags: GET-OUT-OF-IRS-TAX-DEBT, irs tax help, tax relief help, IRS-PAYMENT-PLAN, irs debt, irs help, help with debt, help with tax debt

Reconsidering Corporate Tax Privacy, Joshua D. Blank

New York University Law and Economics Working Papers

For over a century, politicians, government officials and scholars in the United States have debated whether corporate tax returns, which are currently subject to broad tax privacy protections, should be publicly accessible. The ongoing global discussion of base erosion and profit shifting by multinational corporations has generated calls for greater tax transparency. Throughout this debate, participants have focused exclusively on the potential reactions of a corporation’s managers, shareholders and consumers to a corporation’s disclosure of its own tax return information. There is, however, another perspective: how would the ability of a corporation’s stakeholders and agents to observe ...

Adam Epstein

On March 26, 2014, the Chicago district (Region 13) of the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) ruled that Northwestern University football players qualify as employees and can unionize and bargain collectively, a decision which contravenes the National Collegiate Athletic Association’s (NCAA) core principle of amateurism. Shortly after, Northwestern University filed an appeal with the NLRB in Washington, D.C. to quash the prior Region 13 decision. This case has added fuel to the longstanding debate over whether student-athletes should be paid. Amidst arguments both for and against supporting the pay-for-play model from a purely compensatory stance, there has been ...

Faculty Scholarship

Economic analysis of Maryland’s tax regime — including its taxes on inbound, outbound, and domestic activities — confirms what the internal consistency test suggests, namely, that the Maryland “county” tax discourages interstate commerce. Specifically, the Maryland tax regime discourages Maryland residents from earning income outside of Maryland, and it simultaneously discourages nonresidents from earning income in Maryland. Maryland alone causes this distortion; the distortion does not depend on the taxes imposed by any other state.

Boston College Law School Faculty Papers

Although many commentators have called for increased efforts to incentivize organ donations, theorists and some evidence suggest these efforts will be ineffective or even could perversely crowd out altruistic efforts. Prior papers examining the impact of tax incentives for donations generally report zero or negative coefficients. We argue these studies incorrectly define their tax variables, and rely on difference-in-differences methods despite likely failures of the requisite parallel trends assumption. We therefore aim to identify the causal effect of tax incentive legislation to serve as an organ donor on living related and unrelated kidney donation rates in the U.S states ...

Nevada Supreme Court Summaries

Exotic dancing establishments sought a declaration that Nevada’s Live Entertainment Tax (NLET) violates the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution because it singles out small groups based on the content of their speech and taxes them in an effort to suppress their ideas. The Supreme Court of Nevada found that NLET does not discriminate on the basis of speech, target a small group of speakers, or threaten to suppress viewpoints or ideas in violation of the First Amendment because appellants failed to show that NLET is not rationally related to a legitimate government purpose.

The Intersection Of Tax And Bankruptcy: The Mccoy Rule, John Ferguson

John Ferguson

Congress Promotes Perpetual Trusts: Why?, Lawrence W. Waggoner

Law & Economics Working Papers

This posting updates the article titled Congress Promotes Perpetual Trusts: Why?. The article was originally posted on SSRN in September 2013. The updated version incorporates a discussion of two new developments—the unveiling of the long-awaited House Ways and Means Committee’s proposal for comprehensive tax reform and the issuance of the president’s proposed budget for 2015. Both of these new developments are disappointing because neither proposes curtailing or effectively curtailing perpetual trusts. By unwittingly granting a tax exemption for perpetual trusts, Congress undermined state perpetuity law and promoted private trusts that can last and remain tax exempt for ...

Redevelopment In California: The Demise Of Tif-Funded Redevelopment In California And Its Aftermath, George Lefcoe, Charles W. Swenson

University of Southern California Legal Studies Working Paper Series

California was the first state to embrace the use of tax increment financing (TIF) for redevelopment, and the first state to abandon it. Both the rise and fall of redevelopment are attributable to the fact that cities and counties sponsoring redevelopment could pledge not just their own share of the property tax increments from redevelopment project areas but also those of the other taxing entities including schools and special districts.

By voter initiative in 1978, California enacted significant limitations on the property tax, cutting property tax revenues by half. The property tax had been the most important revenue source for ...

United States National Report On Exchange Of Information, Joshua D. Blank, Ruth Mason

New York University Law and Economics Working Papers

This National Report was prepared for the 2014 Annual Congress of the European Association of Tax Law Professors, which took place in May 2014 at Koç University, Istanbul, Turkey. This National Report discusses administrative and legal mechanisms, especially the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA), that the United States has deployed to obtain offshore tax information. Portions of this National Report were originally published in Joshua D. Blank and Ruth Mason, “Exporting FATCA,” 142 Tax Notes 1245 (2014).

List Of The Most Popular Irs Tax Forms & Pubs, Lissa Coffey

LissaCoffey

Here are links to the most common tax forms needed to prepare your income tax returns. All tax forms are in the portable document format (PDF) and require Adobe Acrobat Reader. You can use Acrobat Reader to view the documents and print documents. Most of the IRS forms also allow you to type in your information and save a copy with your data to your computer